i've felt some pain, i've seen some things, (but I'm here now)
by lges
Summary: Stress baking was a common thing for Susan Bones. Exams? Stress baking. Bad breakup with some silly guys? Stress Baking. Aunt murdered by a supremacist wizard? Stress baking. On the contrary, Hannah Abbott hated baking, because it was her mother's thing. / susan x hannah :: post war


**hi! this is a susanhannah for winterylovegood on tumblr. hope you'll like it.**

 **wc: 1744  
pairing: susan x hannah **

* * *

Stress baking was a common thing for Susan Bones. Exams? Stress baking. Bad breakup with some silly guys? Stress Baking. Aunt murdered by a supremacist wizard? Stress baking.

(it was all flour and sugar, and knots in her belly)

On the contrary, Hannah Abbott hated baking, because it was her mother's thing. She had not set foot in the kitchen seen her death. It was too much, seeing the wizard recipes book on the counter and the rolling pin and smelling the cinnamon and pumpkin odor when she opened the cupboard to take a glass. It was too much.

So, when seven months after the end of the war (there is voluntaries team for rebuilding Hogwarts and so many commemorations to which she can't go because she can't even make it out of her bed, there are marble memorials and snow on the roofs) Susan proposed her doing Christmas baking together, she had to say no.

* * *

She had to, hadn't she? There was this small cute girl on her doorstep, honey-like hair braided and a smile like liquid sun, and she said no.

"No, Susan". She had never told such things to her, her best friend, before. She could not even imagine it happen one more time. It was too painful to watch: her solar face falling apart (in spite of her red nose from a cold and of the huge scarves rolled up around her neck), incomprehension shining in her eyes, her mouth mid-opened like if she was about to have the last word, to make her said yes.

Hannah closed and locked the door before she has the chance to.

"If you try an alohomora on my door, Susan, I will jinx you" she warned her with a shaking voice.

"What is going on, Hannah, for Merlin's sake! Can you stop acting like a child and open this freaking door? Have I done something to upset you like this? Is it because we did not go shopping last week because…"

The fact was that Susan had preferred to talk to a thousand of strangers about the Second Wizarding War, like the freaking heroine that she was, rather than spending her afternoon with her.

But some things were sacred. Shopping afternoons were not, but baking was.

"It is not." sighed Hannah, sitting on the hard floor, her back against the door. Somehow, she imagined Hannah doing the same thing, on the other side.

"It is because of the baking?" asked Hannah slowly like she was picking her words, carefully.

Susan knew she was.

"It's my mom…she made these cookies for Christmas. In shape of stars, trees and snowmen. Lots of sugar, a bit dry but chewy when you ate it with a glass of milk"

There was a silence. Long, soft. Hannah closed her eyes, and she could almost feel it, _smell it_.

The past. A laugh. A hand brushing her face with nothing but pure love. Cookie dough.

"Your mom, did she bake with her wand?"

"Yes. It was amazing."

"I could teach you the muggle way. My way." said Susan after a while. "If you want of course, because I would never force you to do something you're uncomfortable with." she added precipitately.

Deeply, in the core, Hannah knew it was what she needed. But she could not push herself to open this door and to let come in the reality, the grief, the pain of a kitchen who will never be her mom's anymore.

"It's almost Christmas, Hannah. You need to open this door."

Inside, the girl remarked that she had not answered. But she was not able to do so yet.

"I do not see the causality between Christmas and me opening my door"

"It's about charity. You cannot let me freeze to death outside."

Hannah grinned. She tried to reprimand this but it was stronger than her. Susan was stronger than her, a true fighter.

Hannah stood up.

(She did not know this much about charity. Yes, she was a Hufflepuff. Yes, she was kind and good, hard-worker and generous but –)

She opened the door. Suddenly Susan hugged her. It was not soft like when they were younger, it was not calming like when they were grieving and crying and shaking because of the fear and the dead everywhere.

It was good. She was sweet and soft, Susan, but not then. At this precise moment when their bodies collided, it was hard and strong.

"fuck Susan, I think you're trying to kill me with your love, right now" the other girl managed to whisper. "I appreciate that, but you are going to break me something."

"Nothing that love can't heal."

Susan did not let her go, did not reduce the pressure of her warm body against hers. Hanna felt her check burning, far too conscious of Susan's hands and yellow painted nails slowly rubbing her back.

 _Nothing that love can't heal._ It was what Susan was aimed at: heal people and their broken bones and their bruises and their dislocated bodies.

But their hearts?

"Susan…" she mumbles.

Her perfume was all over her face, Hannah's chin deeply buried in her shoulder. Inhaling deeply, she noticed a mark, a pinkish scar, where her pull did not cover her bare skin.

She put her lips on this nightmare's present, hiding, it, covering it. Hannah wondered if Susan felt it: The lingering sensation of her mouth against a place that used to hurt, to bring her back into the horror.

There's no gap between them, there's no distance, there's nothing but a thousand moves or words that one of the girls could say or do.

But they did not. They did not move, they did not speak.

(Hannah had begun thinking about Susan _differently_ for a while: since the first day of sun after the war. It was a picnic. Flowers in her hair, vodka in a pumpkin juice bottle, and the hard feeling of guilt sinking in their stomachs)

They did not speak until Susan tossed a lock of Hannah's hair away behind her ear, making her shivering, melting, a feeling of urgency pulsing in her whole body.

Except that she did not know what exactly was the nature of this emergency. She wanted to let herself go to these feelings.

She needed it. She wanted her.

"Hannah" whispered the brown-haired girl, her eyes flickering. "I want to help you, I want to be there for you. All the time."

Her hand was still cupping Hannah's face and each contact send shivers down the blond girl like if a thousand of snowflakes were falling down on her cheeks.

Melting because of the heat of her own body, of her own heart.

"May I?" asked then Susan, her face so close that Hannah could see how long her lashes were.

But Hannah had no words, no answer.

Just a tiny move, so slow like when you're walking in a dream, towards her that was just enough to break the distance between their bodies.

Leading her towards the kitchen, Hannah lifted her up on the kitchen counter and it was it.

She was kissing Susan, her very first best friend since year one (even before Justin or Ernie), her anchor, her fighter, another survivor.

Sometimes, Susan's lips brushed Hannah from her pink lips to her collarbone, her neck, her jaw. Sometimes they stopped, just to look at each other (red nose from the cold, red lips from the kiss, red cheeks from the feelings).

A long moment after their first kiss, Susan broke their bodies apart, letting Hannah craving for more.

"We have to Christmas baking together now" she affirmed with a new tenderness in her smile while she straightens her hair with her fingers. Like it's usual, normal.

Susan wanted it, she wanted it to be her routine. She had always looked up to good things to wake up to, even when the days were dark and the nights were red and grey, stroke by green lethal spells.

It was a good pumpkin pie, a warm scarf, Hannah and her golden soul.

"Will you kiss me like that again if we bake?" Hannah wondered, amused by her own high-pitched tone.

Susan grabbed her shoulder to get down the counter and wandered her brown eyes on the whole kitchen.

"Oh, it will be better than that. Cooking makes everything better"

And it did. It was chocolate flavored all over their faces, flour-fights finishing in tight hugs. After a while, their fists were sore around the rolling pin, their faces twitched because of concentration, wanting their pastries to be better and better and better –

Hannah was not used to using her own hands to cook. To feel the soft dough in her palm while she kneaded it. To whisk flour, egg and sugar in a bowl with a new vigor and a growing desire to make her sweet mom proud of her.

Hannah was not used to using her own hand to cook. It was a whole new set of gestures, from licking her finger tipped with chocolate, to brushing her girlfriend's hair.

They put the plates in the oven, smiling wider.

(Hint: the cookies were good. Golden and crispy, glazed with hot sugar, filled with melted chocolate or salt caramel.)

This night, they fell asleep at the precise moment when their heads touched the pillows, exhausted by the feelings, the sugary adrenaline.

Holding sticky hands.

* * *

Later, when the snow began to melt on the pavement, Hannah decided to accompany Susan to support group.

To understand why she did what she did. To understand what motivated her to bake at night and to hold on her when she was crying in her sleep.

The castle was still worthy of a Danish painting – grey snowy sky, frozen grass, deep dark lake, and a dozen of people swaddled in gloves and scarves and coats, all in shade of grey and icy blue.

She went one day to hear about the traumas of a young girl, a first-year at the time of the Battle of Hogwarts.

She went another day to share her own story. Their story.

And even the days where it was too hard for her to shower, to stand up or to speak, Susan left to the meeting, fighting and healing enough for both of them.

Even when there still was ice and shadow in Hannah's heart and soul, Susan left a plate of cookies fresh out of the oven for her.


End file.
